Tiller!

My mini-tiller came a couple of weeks ago, but first I had to get another wrench to put it together (we only had one of the requisite size, but needed two), then yesterday I finally carved out a bit of time to put it together. Once I did, though, I put it to use immediately. I worked a couple of bags of topsoil into a corner of the yard that's on a short but steep slope and planted the last of the portulaca I bought a while back. (And replanted a few crocus bulbs that got thrown to the surface in the process.) I'm hoping they'll serve as a nice ground cover until next spring, when I can get some creeping phlox for that spot to keep it from washing away and generally looking barren.

I wasn't able to do the patch on the north side of the house where I want to plant the mountain laurel and 2 ferns; my tiller's electric and I didn't have quite enough extension cord to reach. But that's easily remedied - I picked up a 50' (neon green!) extension cord after church and now just have to decide if I want to run out there right after lunch and get to work, or wait until later in the afternoon or maybe even after dinner, when the temperature is no longer in the 90s. It'll be a tough call - I'm itching to get those plants into the ground and that side of the house is well shaded...

I WANT THIS DRESS!!!

I've been thinking hard about getting back into middle eastern dance, looking for classes (tons of beginner classes in my area, very few advanced ones, most of them either too far or on a schedule I can't manage), started browsing this one site and found THIS DRESS! I love the color, the "appliques" (those are squillions of beads & sequins, individually sewn on by hand), the swingy sleeves. I'd be happier with a dress that wasn't quite so fitted along the thighs (how can you travel in a hobble skirt?), but oh, what elegant lines! Wonder how close to a mortgage payment the price tag is?

I never fell in love w/ my wedding dress. As I told the woman who fitted it for me, it was "just a costume" (yes, those were my exact words), to be worn for a single performance. But this! This I'd definitely wear again, on the flimsiest excuse. And the way it's designed, I could even wear it to a fancy gala or black-tie affair; I just wouldn't stand like the model. :D And if I could get it in kelly green or royal blue, say, with gold instead of silver, my gold jewelry would look absolutely stunning with it.

Social Sunday

Last Sunday I ended up at the local diner for dinner. A friend & I had very tentative plans, but when I hadn't heard from him by 6:30, I decided I was too hungry to wait. I'm used to seeing someone I know there, but this was unusual - of 4 booths I passed on the way to where they seated me, I knew people in 3 of them!

Well, just as I finished ordering, D called to say he was on his way. So we got caught up a bit, and he mentioned that a mutual friend was sitting on the other side of the diner with his partner. When they finished, P came over to say hello, then C joined us, and we all sat and talked for at least another half an hour. And since they're all professional musicians and performers, it was much more fun than the book I'd brought to read while I ate.

Purple fuzzies in the grass

Last weekend I was washing all the flannel sheets before putting them away for the summer (it had finally gotten hot enough that I just had to dig out the percales) and decided I might as well wash the washable-wool blanket too. Man, you never saw so much navy-blue fuzz! Forget dust bunnies, these were fuzz rhinos or elephants or something, and that was just in the washer. What really surprised me was the relatively little amount of fuzz I pulled out of the dryer's lint filter afterwards. When I went out to water my flowers later, though, I learned where all that lint livestock had gone - there was about a 2-foot radius around the outside dryer vent that was full of huge hunks of purplish-blue lint.

Binge gardening - update

Got out to the cabin again this weekend to see how all my plantings were doing after fending for themselves for a couple of weeks. Turns out they're doing pretty well, especially considering how little rain we got those 2 weeks. The euonymus isn't thriving, but it hasn't died, or even gotten dried-up-looking, so I'm satisfied. The poor lilies-of-the-valley seem to have ended up as deer snacks. Of the 20 pots' worth I planted, I could locate perhaps half a dozen, of which nearly all had been stripped to bare, pathetic little stalks.

The biggest success was probably the pachysandra; all of it seems to be looking as happy as when I put it in 2 weeks ago, and it seems to be very definitely not merely deer-resistant but deer-proof! How do I know? One patch of pachysandra ended up on the edge of a deer trail. Part of the patch looked rather trampled yesterday, and one of the untrampled plants had a bite or two out of it. But only a bite or two. Conjures up a mental image of a deer strolling past, deciding to sample this new plant, then deciding it wasn't tasty enough to warrant another bite.

The surprise, for me, was the ferns. Having never planted any before, or even had them in my yard (the ones growing wild near the cabin don't count), I was completely ignorant of how they propagate. I noticed that a few of my ferns had broken-looking fronds lying on the ground. When I went to pick one up, I met with resistance. Remembering the little spores I've often noticed on the undersides of fern fronds, I'm guessing the grounded fronds will soon sprout new ones. They're multi-talented, though; at least some varieties, including the ostrich ferns I bought, propagate from runner roots (if that's the right term). And I noticed that all my ferns - all 4 kinds - have new little fronds in various stages of uncurling. I'm delighted to see that they're already starting to spread, which is exactly what I hoped from them.

The two mint plants I brought out looked very lush and healthy in their nice, big pots. They'll provide some very nice flavoring the next time we fix iced tea, even if spearmint doesn't do a thing against ants.

The weekend wasn't a complete success - in addition to the eaten lilies-of-the-valley, the gypsy moth caterpillars had made a HUGE mess, and I couldn't hang the new towel bars because the driver drill had plenty of driver bits, but only 2, too-large drill bits. However, the weather was gorgeous, I managed to finish swapping the flannel sheets for percale on the beds, and I determined that the new antique store in town really is an antique store, not a junk shop or craft store.

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

Sunny, mild (mid-70s), dry, gentle breezes, the birds singing their little hearts out, no annoying insects - if this ain't a perfect day, I don't know what is. So perfect, in fact, that when I got home from work, I left the front door open and started opening windows to let in some of those nice little breezes. (It's safe to open all the windows now that tree pollen season is well behind us.) Tomorrow's highs are supposed to be in the mid- to upper 80s, and Friday is supposed to get well into the 90s, so I'm enjoying this gorgeous weather while it lasts.

I also, finally, swept out the front of the living room, shook out the entryway rug, and even swept the front steps, walk and sidewalk. Any excuse to be out in the lovely weather. If only I had my tiller...

I stopped to pick up some bags of topsoil on the way home, along with a pair of 4" pots of very healthy-looking mint. I think it's spearmint, judging from the smell. The little plastic label was almost as little help as no label at all; instead of a proper identification of the plant, all it says is "assorted herbs"! But they're definitely mint, and nice & bushy and lushly green. I'll take them out to the cabin with me this weekend to go into the two big pots I took out last year. The mint I had planted in them died when the contractor moved them to the back deck before starting demolition. Said demolition included the section of deck that connected the back deck to the house, essentially stranding anything left there (the 2 pots of mint, which withered & died; the BBQ grill; the deck swing).

First sign of summer

Saw my first lightning bugs last night! Forget pool openings or the first 90-degree days; for me the first sign of summer is lightning bugs.

Not that hot today - we had some pretty torrential rains move through yesterday evening which cooled things down quite a bit. Only in the 80s today, and it's supposed to get down into the 50s tonight - I look forward to sleeping w/ the bedroom windows open, now that tree pollen season is well behind us for the year.

I think I'm gonna hafta bookmark The Onion

There on one of the blogs I read was a link to an Onion article that's funny if you've ever done (or attended) any kind of "updated" or "concept" show, but especially if you've done or seen updated or concept Shakespeare.

I may have to break down and bookmark the Onion's site. I see they have an article on the latest Harry Potter book, too...

Hi, Mom!

I was telling Mom last weekend about my unplanned gardening binge out at the cabin. She wasn't familiar with many of the plants I mentioned (e.g., the fern varieties), so I e-mailed her links to pictures of everything, along w/ the link to my blog. I think I have a new reader, as Mom mentioned the blog the next time we talked.

Hi, Mom! (waving)

Revels will be fun!

Went to my first Revels chorus meeting last night. The newbies among us have been assigned a "chorus buddy" to help us learn the ropes (mine sings alto, too; wonder if that's by design?), and the opening meet-and-greet, based on how many Christmas Revels people had done, tried to build a feeling of family or community. At the break, the one Reveler I knew going in confirmed the family nature of Revels, telling me that a few years ago, when first her husband and then she fell ill, other Revelers brought them meals, visited, and checked up on them every so often to see if they needed anything.

After we got introductions and administrative matters taken care of, we sat down to do some singing. We didn't have all 38 choristers but we had most of us, and oh boy, did we sound good! I've sung with some pretty wonderful voices, but this is the first time in ages that I've sung with so many wonderful voices. I loved it! I absolutely cannot wait until rehearsals start up in earnest in September - I am definitely looking forward to making music with such a large company of good, rich, solid voices!

One of the announcements for the newbies was that one of the many Revels traditions is that everyone gets a bit of "business" to do. Anyone who was interested in sthg in particular, wanted to read for a character turn, or had some unusual trick or talent was encouraged to let the ass't director know that. So when the crowd thinned, I trotted over to let her know that I'd like to read for sthg and also that I can dance w/ a sword on my head. They may not be able to fit that little party trick into their Elizabethan theme, but if they can, well, I'm ready to show off. :)

Keeping my fingers crossed

...along with my toes, my arms, my legs, my eyes... TW is manifested on a return flight in the wee hours of July 3rd! Something could still happen to interfere with that (plane having mechanical problems, things heating up in theater, etc.), but being on the passenger manifest is a very promising sign. I won't rest easy, though, until I see him walking through the doors from Customs and into my arms.

Is this a problem?

I just realized that, with my fall season all sewn up, I don't have any excuse to audition for anything until companies start auditioning for their late-winter and spring shows. A shame. I don't know what it is about auditioning that I like, but maybe it's the possibility that I'll be the one they want, that they'll say "Wow, where has she been hiding?!" Or it could be I'm a touch wistful because I always enjoy the dance part, and it's fun when they let us read (although admittedly, with musicals that usually doesn't happen until callbacks). Maybe it's sizing myself up against the competition and seeing where I stand, or getting a chance to "perform" one of the pieces my voice teacher & I have been working on. And of course there's always the delightful prospect of a new toy to play with, in the form of a new show to do.

While it's nice to know already what I'll be doing this fall theatrically, that means of course that I won't be doing any of the other shows being performed this fall. However, I can always console myself w/ the same fantasy I indulged in when I was called back for Merry Widow earlier this year and had to turn it down: had I been able to audition, they would certainly have recognized immediately that I'd be wonderful in the role and have offered it to me before I left auditions. :D

Binge gardening!

Finally got back out to the cabin over the weekend. No frozen pipes, thank heaven, but the sink in the addition had sprung a leak. Seems that when the plumber installed it, he overtightened the drain pop-up sleeve. The plastic couldn't take the pressure and cracked, so now our contractor has to get him back out there to fix it. Good thing it's still under warranty.

Lovely weather the whole time I was there, though it did get a bit humid. I had planned to put up the blinds we ordered back in December, but stopped by the neighborhood nursery en route to the day's errands. I went in search of some ground covers for the hill where we put in the new septic tank & field to keep it all from washing down the hill. Turned out this nursery specializes in just what I was looking for. As a result, I ended up with 20 pots of lilies of the valley (averaging 4-6 pips in each pot), 5 ostrich ferns, 2 branford rambler ferns, 3 marginal ferns, a Christmas fern potted w/ sthg else, half a trash bag full of euonymus, aka purple wintercreeper, and half a trash bag full of pachysandra cuttings. Phil, the nurseryman, also gave me two 5-gal. buckets full of compost. I then spent the rest of the afternoon getting all the euonymus and pachysandra planted, as well as a few of the lilies and a couple of the ferns. I finally stopped because the gnats were getting so persistent; they shifted from "snack" to "feast" mode, as I told TW. I was shocked to find I'd been out there, not the 2 hours or so I thought, but 4 hours.

I only managed a scant hour for planting the next day, in no small part because our property in most places has just enough clay to hold the rocks in place. Because it's been so dry lately, that clay is baked solid, too. The only places I could dig down more than 1/2" were the places leaves had collected and started to decay. I decided to take Phil up on his offer to lend me his mini-tiller. Boy, is that one slick tool! Despite the rocks and hard-packed clay, I managed to dig holes for the remaining 17 lilies & ferns in less than an hour!

I've now got an electric mini-tiller on order, which I'll use to work 2 more buckets of Phil's compost into the clay on the north side of the house, where I'll plant a rambler fern, a royal fern, and a "keepsake" mountain laurel. That compost is so rich-looking, I'm hoping the ferns & laurel will finally succeed where everything else I've tried to plant there has failed. So far, the only things that have survived are the wood hyacinths that naturalized from the neighbor's yard and a few of the lily-of-the-valley pips Mom brought me several years ago but which have never bloomed. Oh, and the moss that fills the otherwise bare spots.

The muscles protesting my gardening binge are starting to forgive me, the clay stains on my hands are starting to fade, and my broken nails will grow back. I look forward to my next trip out to the cabin to see how many of these plants managed to take hold despite the wretched growing conditions. (I was very liberal with the compost, as if apologizing to the poor plants.) When I returned the tiller and collected more compost and the plants for the house, Phil offered to check on my plants and water them for me if we don't get rain out there! Bless his heart, I'm definitely recommending him & his nursery to our neighbors out there!

Bye Bye, Birdie

Birdie closed last weekend. Some shows you're sorrier to see close than others; this was one I was sorry to see close. Good cast, fun role, great audiences - what fun!

Our director's pre-curtain ritual includes what he calls a "circle of love". Before each performance, he singled out a few cast members to say a few words about their performance, dedication, talent or what-have-you. By the matinee added our last day, he'd gotten to all of us; what was left for our final performance? A lovely twist - he had each of us say something to and about the person on our left, passing the love around the circle. Some of the tributes had us awfully teary, but the love in the air was thick. It felt like one of our best, if not our very best, performance of the run. I know I sure had a good time pulling out all the stops, especially when I got to rant about Albert not needing me any more.

The cast party on Sunday was fun, and we got presents! Our director had a Birdie mug & magnet for each of us, our stage manager distributed 8x10 cast photos and photo disks, the company president handed out DVDs of the show, Ursula distributed cards & chocolates, and Ursula's mom had CDs of her photos for everyone. First cast party I ever attended where we went home w/ party favors. :D

TW may yet get extended

TW called this afternoon to say his deployment may yet get extended because his (insert vile imprecations here) agency still doesn't have a replacement lined up for him! His first thought was the B&B deposit and nonrefundable plane tickets for our vacation. He asked me to look into the travel regs to see whether he'd be able to deduct them or whatever on his travel voucher. The answer, of course, is no. Not that I'm particularly overjoyed at the prospect of paying high-season prices for tickets we might not be able to use, but what really upsets me is that it would be because he's stuck out there. We are both SO VERY NOT ready for him to stay any longer than he has to; a few days, maybe, but this could be an additional month or more!

Ooh, wow, drugs, man...

Yesterday I finally remembered to pick up the flexaril (muscle relaxant) Rx the work doc called in for me last week. They warned me and warned me about the drowsiness - "Don't take it until RIGHT before you go to bed, and be sure you can sleep a full 8 hours". Man, they weren't kidding! I took the stuff about 10 or 10:30 last night and still felt a bit groggy at noon today. I gotta find out if I can split these things or I'm not going to be able to do anything at work beyond keeping my head from hitting the desk.

Tag

Or maybe this should be Planning Ahead... Auditioned at 10 a.m. Saturday for the local Christmas Revels. (Apparently they always audition in May; maybe to lock people in and minimize cast members' conflicts?), ran home to change & inhale some lunch before heading off for a 1:30 call for our last two Birdie performances.

This audition was structured a bit differently from most I've done. First of all, they wanted 2 pieces, both to be sung a capella. They prefered you sing a "traditional carol" and another piece of your choice, but "preferably not opera or Broadway". They also specified they were looking for a "clear, straight" vocal tone; first time I've ever seen that much specificity. But then, of course, you wouldn't expect the panel to care about your coloratura if you're auditioning for Rent, or your belt if you're auditioning for La Boheme.

The dance piece was fun, and the first time I've ever done one where we danced with anyone else (i.e., looking at and making contact w/ them) as opposed to just dancing as a group of individuals. They taught us a fragment of a 3-couple set dance, very easy, and I got a partner who apparently was a Revels veteran, so he knew what he was doing.

This was very much a group audition, and not just because they took us in batches; I was in a group of 4. First they taught us the dance bit, then ushered each of us in to sing our solos. We all danced together (the choreographer and another staffer filled out our set of 6), then they had us sing together - first a round, then a bit of a 3-part song (set low enough that I could just as easily have sung the "soprano" as the "alto" line).

I left feeling satisfied with how I'd done. The group stuff was a piece of cake; I wore a "dance-y" skirt, which I played with during our little dance bit, and the group singing was fun. The only scary bit was singing a capella. I hadn't considered that working without an accompanist might be hard. After all, not having to worry about the pianist having trouble w/ notes or tempo is a good thing, right? ;) I quickly realized that the accompaniment hands you your starting note in the intro; I had to restart "America, the Beautiful" because 2 notes into it, I realized that if I didn't start again a little lower, I was going to top out higher than I wanted to sing "naked" notes at that hour of the morning. I could feel the nervousness in my voice, and boy, does that "exposure" force you to focus!

One of the auditioners commented on the dance section of my resume. I mentioned that, while I'd not yet seen a Revels, I'd auditioned once before, done another show w/ a Revels veteran, and 2 of the directors of a troupe I used to dance with had helped choreograph a recent Revels production.

To make a long story short, I learned this morning that I'll be joining their chorus. Yes, it's "just" chorus, but it sounds like the chorus gets to do a LOT of singing and dancing, which suits me just fine. Especially after doing a musical in which I got to do no dancing (unless you count backstage antics) and very little singing. So that's my fall show lined up. Now to start looking at what's going on next spring...

Cervical radiculopathy

Cervical radiculopathy - that's the preliminary diagnosis. (I made the doctor spell it for me.) They changed my computer configuration on Friday; I now have 2 monitors instead of one, which meant they had to change where they sit on my desk. It's an old government-issue metal desk, not designed for computers. "An ergonomic disaster" is how I described it in my e-mail to my supervisors yesterday when I realized the pain & numbness in my neck, shoulder, arm and hand not only weren't going away, but were quickly getting worse. Now they're trying to find a way to either retrofit my desk with a keyboard tray instead of the shallow center drawer (at least 2 weeks to get that in) or replace it entirely with new desk with an electrically-controlled height, depending on how much that would cost and whether they have any in stock.

What's scary about this is how very quickly it came on - barely two working days after they changed my computer configuration! All of a sudden, my right arm and hand - my dominant side, of course - feel a little tingly all the time now, with a slight loss of sensation. I don't know that I can wait 2 or 3 weeks for that keyboard tray. Didn't help my confidence any that the guy who came to look at my desk and demonstrate my options (they've got some VERY cool mouse & keyboard variations out there!) was from the Disability Affairs office. All of a sudden I'm worrying about losing some function in that arm and hand. I'm not even 50 yet - I gotta get several more decades' use out of 'em!

It's a little embarrassing, and I kinda feel like a whiner, but I've put up with this crappy old desk for nearly 3 years without more than the occasional complaint under my breath about the annoying squeak in the center drawer. I think this desk design is essentially unchanged since its origin, long before computers were smaller than entire rooms. My sister the occupational therapist would have caniptions if she saw the desk I work at every day.

Lesson learned: design, especially ergonomic design, matters!

Another weekend under our belts

We survived another weekend. Friday was a little rough in places because we'd had 5 (!) days off, but still a good show. Our stage manager even told me the next day that she thought I was particularly "on" Friday night. One of the audience members was someone I'd done Ruddigore with and who is a good friend of Albert's. So I got a passing "you were good" and he got most of her attention, which is fine. After all, he's her age, good-looking, single and male, while I'm only one of those. :)

Saturday night we had an interesting diversion, if you will. Just as we came to the last chord in the Act I finale, it started raining on the musicians! Very literally raining - it had just started raining hard enough that water was sluicing down along the column in their corner of the nave, hitting the ornamental ring near its top and spraying all over them! We had a mad scramble to move at least the woodwinds and piano out of harm's way, then had a longer-than-usual intermission while the musicians (fortunately only 5 of them) were relocated and the floor mopped.

Also on Saturday, I knew 4 or 5 people in the audience. One was a woman I know from the chorus at work who also sings in the choir of the church where we're performing. She loved the show, kept telling me "You were great! You were great!" B, with whom I've done several shows, was there to see his niece and remembered only when I made my first entrance that I was in it too. :D He's Jewish and teased me in a complimentary way about my accent, putting on one of his own to do it. C is voice teacher to B, his niece, and several other people I've done shows with; she was there with her husband. Both enjoyed the show, but C complimented me specifically on my enunciation and projection: "I never lost a line, could hear every word perfectly." From a voice teacher, that's a rave review! And the best review to date of my characterization of Mae came by way of the mother of our "Ursula". Friends of theirs came to the show to see Ursula and, as her mother tells the story, "We'd been hearing stories about his mother for years but had never met her because she lives too far away. After seeing the show, our friend told us that 'Now you've met my mother!' " So now the reviews from the "native speakers" are trickling in - the ones I've heard are all positive. Gotta love it! :)

I don't know whether I had anyone in the audience Sunday, but I think it was another good performance. The audience certainly gave us our biggest ovation to date when we came out for bows. Especially nice was that Albert complimented me on my "garbage speech" (when Albert says he doesn't need her any more, Mae rants "Go ahead, get rid of me! Put me out w/ the garbage!") later; said it was especially good. What was funny was that after Albert sends Mae home, she rants & raves, then exits in a huff, and the band strikes up "Glory, Glory, Hallelujah", one of the cast members greeted me backstage with "By the way, happy Mother's Day"! Too funny!

Randolph Macafee gave his "mom" a Mother's Day card; charmed everyone who heard about it. Before he gave it to her, he told a group of us that he thought Albert should give Mae a Mother's Day card; everyone laughed, including me. When he followed up by saying Mrs. Macafee was going to get one, everyone thought it was very sweet. It may not have occured to Albert to give me a card, but that compliment makes a nice substitute.

The theater-to-church-and-back-again drill was faster this weekend because our Conrad Birdie not only was directing things in a very organized fashion, but had wisely mapped out the previous weekend which legs and platforms went where so he could direct "traffic" more efficiently. He seems to have an excellent eye for that kind of mechanical thing; you'd never guess he'd never done the "riser drill" before! I managed to get through without a single splinter or smashed finger, though I do have an interesting assortment of bruises on my forearms from moving chairs, legs, platforms, etc. Good thing that fur coat covers my arms. ;) I do have to wonder, though, at the number of people who showed up in skirts, flipflops, mules and other attire completely unsuited to tech. I can kinda see the younger kids doing that the first weekend, but the adults? And a second weekend, when they shoulda learned the first weekend what this was going to entail? Although, in their defense, they may have been helping haul props, costumes and set pieces (and their numbers are legion!) while I was stacking chairs, carrying platforms, and strapping riser legs together.

I learned that after our last show on Saturday, we not only have to take everything apart and reset the church; we need to get the props, costumes and set pieces out of the building! Can't put 'em back in the parish hall storage area, as the company is losing that space. I'm already starting to make a mental list of the things I need to remember to get back (the phone and wooden chair used as props, the 2 mirrors backstage, gloves for Rosie, tie tack for Albert...)

This has been a very social cast. Several of the adults regularly go out for a "sociable beverage" after rehearsals & performances, and the teenage girls seem to have bonded quite well. So well, in fact, that the oldest young woman who plays a teen has been talking about having them all over to her place for a slumber party. That same woman organized a group of nearly 30 of us to go out to dinner for Mother's Day after yesterday's show. This weekend will see 2 more get-togethers: the producer is organizing dinner at a local pizzeria between Saturday's matinee & evening performances, and the cast party is Sunday.

It's also been a physically demonstrative cast. The girls have been doing something my friends and I never did when we were that age. They spend their down time hanging on each other: sitting in each other's laps, wrapping their arms around each other, or lying on the floor like a pile of puppies, with this one's head resting on that one's tummy, who's resting her feet on someone else. Kinda sweet. Albert & Rosie are pretty chummy (not surprising, given the onstage romance), we've been teasing Harry MacAfee about fooling around w/ Mrs. Merkle (although he's just as affectionate with Doris Macafee), and everyone's generous with hugs. Our director has been such a delight, as both director & human being, that I'd audition for something just because he's directing it.

Hmm; am I a mom or not?

My sister K called last night about a Mother's Day gift my siblings were plotting. (Mom doesn't read my blog, and is getting back from Lourdes today and will be too jetlagged to read it if she were a faithful reader, so this shouldn't be a spoiler.) They're getting (something - it went by so fast, it didn't really register) that includes 5/8" plastic disks that can hold pictures. The others are all submitting pics of their kids and K wanted to know if I wanted to include one of my daughter, who died in Jan '97 at the ripe old age of 4 days. So this afternoon I swung by Kinko's w/ the 5x7 version of the hospital photo, scanned it to a CD, then e-mailed it to K.

She's the only one of my siblings who mentions Colleen to me. I suppose the others are afraid to touch on a sore subject. I also get the impression that some parents are superstitiously reluctant to raise the subject, as if talking about it could make it happen to one of their children.

K always sends me a Mother's Day card. At first that was really, really painful, but now I'm glad to know that someone remembers. A former roommate and very dear friend, and my mother-in-law also send me Mother's Day cards. The first time TW's mom sent me one, I was surprised, but we share a bond in that her 2nd daughter died of Hodgkin's disease at the age of 21. She's asked me about Colleen once or twice, and spoken of Barbara on occasion; I think she appreciates having someone who knows what it's like to bury a child.

Since I don't have any surviving children, I feel almost like a "stealth mom"; are you still a mom if you never got to raise a child? One friend, a single mother of six (and going to school while working full time - I don't know how she does it!), commented recently that "none of your children live with you". As the oldest of 5, I've always had a mile-wide mother hen streak. In college my roommates and I mothered each other, then I mothered my husbands, doing domestic things for them, friends have seen that mother hen in me come out, and now the folks I do shows with reap the benefits - I'm forever tweaking their costumes, working on sets, etc. Some of it even leaks out at work, though I do try to maintain a professional demeanor. ;)

Having had 20 years to get used to my situation, I'm usually OK with it, but sometimes when I see families together, I get really wistful, and holding baby girls is guaranteed to get me all teary-eyed.

Can you stand more thoughts on our opening weekend?

No? Then why are you reading this? :)

Striking the set and stashing everything (set pieces, props, costumes, sound equipment - everything!) didn't take nearly as long as I feared Saturday night - the last of us left by 12:30 Sunday morning. We also got the church back to a stage set in fairly good time Sunday afternoon, although some of the masking flats ended up in slightly different places, which created sightline problems stage right.

The work isn't so much strenuous as tedious, although it is not without risk. I have any number of little scrapes & bruises, and quite a bruise on the nailbed of one finger that didn't get out from between riser and frame quite fast enough. Naturally, it's on my dominant hand, and because it's the last section (joint? finger tip?), the pressure sensitivity means I notice every time I use that finger for a keystroke. Not painful, but certainly a nuisance.

Another eccentricity of performing in a church nave is that you can never bring the house lights down completely at the matinee because you get sunlight streaming in through the stained glass. This meant, among other things, that the black scrim masking the stage right "backstage" area didn't really hide us all that well because we're backlit.

Saturday I ended up running out to a mom-and-pop fabric store to pick up some daisy-sprigged gingham for windows in Ursula's and Kim's "bedrooms". (Sure beats doing housework.) I was going for "girly" curtains and they turned out even better than I'd hoped. I took a few pictures of the curtains once I got them mounted on the window frame piece and will post them if I can ever figure out why our computer flatly refuses to run Photo Shop any more.

Despite not getting to bed until 1:30 Sunday morning, I went ahead & set my alarm for church. It went off, I got up, realized I had another migraine, took some imitrex and went right back to bed. When I finally got up for good shortly after 11, I felt so much better that I can't help but wonder if God was giving me a bye - "sleep in, kid; you need that more than you need to get to church."

Did I mention that the principals are miked for this show? Seems to me from "stage" (standing on the lovely old hardwood floor) that the acoustics are good, but the walls are all brick and the ceiling is quite high in the center but much lower along the sides, so maybe the quality of the acoustics varies widely depending on where you sit. My costume is pretty well suited for the mike. The first dress has a back tie the power pack can clip onto and the second dress has pockets (yes, I actually have a costume with usable pockets!) which are just the right size for it. I can clip the mic to the neckline of the dress, the coat covers the cord from the mic to the power pack, and its neckline is open enough not to block the mic. The only tricky part is not to hit the mic when Mae clutches at her heart dramatically.

My costume is rather a mismatch: I have a feathered black hat that prompted chuckles from my fellow castmembers at the first dress rehearsal and lots of "that's a Mae hat!" comments. Poor thing's needed a bit of repair, though - the cluster of feathers on top has started to disintegrate on me twice. Elmer's glue got me halfway thru opening night, but I had to borrow the producer's glue gun to repair it more securely. I braid my hair and twist it into a bun, wear the hat pretty far forward above that, and nail it to my head with a pair of deadly hatpins that were my aunt's. Good & sturdy (I've had to warn people not to get too close when I've got the hat on) and tipped w/ tiny amethysts, they've served me well in more than one show. I wear the hat at all times, as well as a long (almost midcalf) real fur coat, pearl earrings & necklace, a plain white-gold wedding band (left over from my first marriage), and a pair of obviously well-worn shoes (my own, kept for running errands or wearing in messy weather). Mae's first dress is a black-and-cream check, the second is a brown floral w/ a bit of lace at the neckline; both are suitable frumpy. The only problem I have with the costume is that a genuine fur coat over a polyester dress is a very warm combination! As soon as I come off stage into the wings, I generally catch the coat in the crook of my elbows or take it off entirely, then stand over an a/c grate. Kinda like Marilyn Monroe doing the 7-year-itch thing at, oh, 55 or 60. :D

Naturally, Mae carries a purse at all times, even walking around the Macafee's house. No telling what Queen Elizabeth carries in her purse, but Mama's purse contains: some plain paper to bulk it out; a worn tapestry coin purse holding the large coin (a 2-shilling piece) she gives Albert to buy some candy; a dark green hankie, used as a hand prop; the gloves she wears for the Penn Station scene; the letter from which she wrings out "only a mother's tears" upon arriving in Sweet Apple, OH; the cats-eye glasses Conrad wears when he makes his escape in disguise; a tin of wintergreen Altoids so she can chew Albert out without blasting him with the fumes of whatever she had for dinner; a watch w/ a light-up dial; a tiny flashlight so I can check the list of scene change assignments posted backstage; and a tin of foreign change for weight, so it moves like a real mama's purse. For a while, I even had my swiss army knife in there. When I first added the tin of change, I didn't have much else in the purse, but now I've got so much in there that it'll have the right weight even without all that change. :D

So far I've had people I know at each performance. My neighbors came Friday night and sent a congratulatory "Sweet Apple telegram" backstage. This is a cute idea; for $1, the company will give you a piece of "telegram paper" (bordered in the Bye Bye Birdie logo) on which you can write a note and send it backstage to a cast or crew member. A tenor with whom I've done time in the chorus of many a G&S brought his wife to Saturday's show. He e-mailed me Sunday and, among other comments on the show, described my performance as "outstanding and very entertaining". What a lovely man! :) Sunday a Jewish friend from work came; if she didn't think much of my Jewish mother shtick, she was too polite to say so. I've joked with friends that the acid test of my accent will be the "native speakers" - my Jewish friends who grew up with that accent either themselves or in their family.

Another couple, whom I've known for years, also made it Sunday. They live rather a distance from where most of my shows have been performed so this is the first time they've made it to one of my shows. Our schedules make it hard for us to get together more than a few times a year, so the fact that they not only made it to the show (which I thought was my best performance to date) but were able to stick around so we could have dinner together was a lovely finish to the day.

Now I'm going thru the usual post-opening let-down. After nearly two weeks of rehearsing almost daily with everybody, now we won't see each other until Friday; feels weird to come home, have a leisurely dinner, and not go running out the door again.

God forbid!!!!

TW called me early this morning (before I left for work, instead of midmorning my time) to warn me that, due to some realignments in their section, there's a slight chance he might not get to rotate home on time! The supervisor who told him about the staffing changes also told him that no one has yet been involuntarily extended, but I'm already asking people to pray that TW gets to come home as scheduled. Yes, I'm well aware of all the military families whose father/mother/spouse/loved one is deployed for 12 or 18 months while TW is doing 6, but when you're missing someone terribly, every day added on is painful no matter how long or short the separation.

At this point we've now been married 6 years and a couple of weeks. Of that time, the chunks of time we've been 2 continents apart add up to nearly 2 years. I can't help but think of all those families in WWII and earlier who sent loved ones off to war not knowing when they'd be back - months, years, or only in a box. They didn't have the telecommunications advantages we do, either. Phone calls and e-mail will never replace being able to hold someone's hand, but at least TW & I have been able to talk pretty much every day. Not bad at all, especially given the 7-hour time difference.

On our way to a fully sold-out run!

They were adding seats for all 3 performances this weekend; today they even had some poor souls seated way over in the nave's choir area, where they probably couldn't see very much. They were even turning people away at the door yesterday & today, and at intermission today, the producer asked the cast if we'd be able to add a matinee the last Saturday of the run. Nothing like that kind of ticket sales to make you feel good about how your show is going! Granted, we can't squeeze in all that many chairs (I'd be shocked if they could manage 130), but it's still far better than playing to audience that are outnumbered by the cast.

Random thoughts on another opening night

Well, we survived Opening Night. Some of the glitches weren't all that minor, but the audience really seemed to enjoy the show, and that's what counts.

Still to do when I arrived at the church yesterday afternoon - masking for the upstage entrances and for the stage-right area where we were stashing props, set pieces, and people (including access to the men's changing area). We also still needed platforms to go behind the scrim for Telephone Hour, and a frame to hold the windows "defining" Kim's & Ursula's bedrooms for their first scene. I think all that got finished by 6:30 - yes, that's right, only about 1 1/2 hours before downbeat! (Can't say "curtain", as we don't have any, given that we're performing in a church nave.)

While I took my sewing machine & kit with me, I ended up using only my tape measure and shears. I still got to have fun with fabric, though. Our director had bought a huge bolt of theatrical fabric (that black stuff used for curtain legs) for 99 cents/yard on E-bay, so I meaured off pieces of that to drape a couple of the masking flats (one was painted red and the other had a huge tear in it which showed white against the black paint). He also had a bolt of very good quality muslin (no slubs, straight grain, fine weave), which we used to make curtains for Kim's & Ursula's bedroom windows. I think our director started bulding that window piece around 5 p.m., I finished using white duct tape to pleat & hang the curtains around 6, and someone else swathed the base of the window piece with more muslin.

This is the first time I've done a show where we were still building the set so close to downbeat. Last-minute set dressing, yes, but set building, no. Every time someone would start to say "I can't believe we open in (VERY short amount of time) and we're still ...", I'd shush them and tell them I was trying desperately not to think about that, as my nerves were quite bad enough already!

Another stressor was that our props runner sent out a new list of scene change assignments yesterday. I don't know that everyone had a chance to look it over, as I ended up striking a couple of things alone or for someone else. Certainly more than one scene change took longer than it needed to because of the confusion. I found that the very first of my new assignments was going to have to go. Because I was striking a few pieces off left after the opening scene, I wasn't able to get stage right in time to come on for Telephone Hour - I missed that scene completely! Not a disaster for the show, as I'm just one more adult behind the scrim, but I was so upset about it that I spent the scene in the ladies' changing area swearing a blue streak. Poor Rosie was back there changing and had to listen to me. I need to apologize to her; she didn't need that aggravation.

On the up side, "Ann O'Nymous" is gone. After being even later for that costume change last night, I asked the director if I could just sing from the wings and he said yes. Hallelujah! Not having to worry about that change makes my life much easier.

By now you may be wondering "So how did the show go?!?" Judging from the audience reaction, I think it went very well. Typical of a Friday-night audience, they were a little slow warming up, but quickly got into it. There were certainly wide awake by the time I came on for my first scene - they chuckled at much of Mae's dialogue and seemed a bit shocked at some of the nastier things she says to Rosie. ("What does Rosie need a job for? In a year or two she'll be getting Social Security.") It was interesting and a little weird to play Mae for an audience, at long last. Having "real people" out there certainly changed the chemistry of my performance; in my very first scene, when Mae is talking about how "a mother can ride crowded in a dirty subway...", I found myself almost confiding in the audience, not merely kvetching to Albert.

I knew having an audience would affect my timing; you can never predict for sure which lines will get bigger reactions than others. However, this is the first time I've worked in a setting where the audience is so very close, and sitting higher than we are. (We're mostly on the floor, while most of the audience seating is on risers.) Makes for a very different energy, and I felt I was getting more energy from them than usual because of the more intimate setting. Albert even noticed that I adjusted my line readings in a couple of places. I must have looked worried, because he hastened to add that the changes were good. :D

I'm told the audience was shouting & cheering during Honestly Sincere, Conrad Birdie's first number, though I couldn't hear it backstage over all the teenager screams. ;) In fact, the audience seemed to love all the production numbers, and Rosie's last big number, Spanish Rose, got one of the biggest hands of the show. She's been sweating bullets over that one and working very hard on it, so I was delighted to hear how well received it was.

The company had an opening night reception after the show and I heard lots of favorable comments. The woman who founded the company came up to me and complimented me on my performance, even going so far as to say that she'd been asked to audition for Mae. She couldn't because she was going to be out of town for most of the run, but said that, while she'd have loved to do the role, "You were better!" What a generous thing to say!

Pray for us!

Since we couldn't rehearse on the set last night, we reviewed music and blocking. Because the two things I'm in were among the first things we worked on, I was home shortly after 9. However, instead of going straight to bed, I made opening-night cards, threw my costume dresses into the wash, and took care of a few other preparations, so it was midnight by the time I got to bed and turned out the light. For all that, I couldn't sleep past 6:30 this morning. I lay there for nearly half an hour trying to will my body back to sleep, but my brain had already kicked into high gear so I eventually gave up.

Last night I told the director I was willing to bring my sewing machine if he still wanted to rig some kind of masking for the upstage entrances. The look on his face let me know he planned to take me up on that offer, so last night I packed up my sewing stuff and set it by the front door, ready to be loaded into the car. I'm actually looking forward to sewing masking drapes; it'll make me feel in control of the situation, however slightly, and I'm so used to doing some kind of sewing during Tech that I think it'll calm me down. I'll also be there plenty early to help; having that "time cushion" will help my nerves, too.

The dancer who hurt her foot last weekend actually danced on the foot Wednesday night, but the boy with the newly-broken collarbone wasn't there last night. He was obviously still in pain Wednesday, so I'm wondering whether he'll be able to go on tonight, poor kid. He was one of the better male dancers, too, so at least one of the teen dance numbers will suffer for his absence.

I've got a bad case of Opening Night jitters today! Not sure how much of that is due to the last-minute things still to be done (new scene-change assignments, new placement for Telephone Hour, possibly new set masking, insha'allah) and how much is due to the fact that I made the coffee a bit too strong this morning. Two dancers hurt, new set stuff that we won't get to rehearse before we have an audience, I've been dropping lines all week (you'd better believe I plan to drill my lines today!) - is it any wonder I'm nervous? Part of me knows I'll be fine as soon as we have an audience, but just the same, pray for us all, especially our poor, long-suffering director.

Taking it a little easy today.

I had planned to take today off work but ended up having to go in for a meeting (rescheduling would have been more trouble than it was worth). So I warned them I'd come in late and leave early, since I wasn't able to take the whole day.

Good decision; I slept until nearly 7, which felt good. I also left early enough to pick up a color cartridge for the printer and a coupla other things and still get home by 4.

Rehearsals Tuesday night & last night haven't made me feel any more sanguine about our tech. I did have an actual oven to put my head in last night, but the Telephone Hour scrim is still to be rigged, and there's so very little masking around the stage area that I'm afraid we're all gonna hafta stand a few yards from the entrances to avoid being seen. That'll affect timing of entrances, and we won't get another chance to rehearse that before we open, which does not give me warm fuzzies!

We got 2 more musicians Tuesday night, bringing us to 6 - I joked w/ a few folks that we'd be up to a 20+-piece orchestra by Closing! And then at least one of them was missing last night - how the **** are they supposed to learn the show if they aren't there?!?

Tuesday night Albert & I found ourselves reblocking part of a scene on no notice. At that point, Mae is trying to guilt Albert into not going after Rosie by asking him to take her head out of the oven when he gets back from looking for Rosie. All along, we've been told the oven would be up center, but when the "kitchen wagon" finally appeared, it was tall enought that it blocked some other things and got moved down right. However, we didn't find out about this until we got to the scene where I have to stick my head in the oven and he pulls me out again. We ended up reblocking on the fly to pull the scene back into the light. (The lighting isn't quite as wide as the set.)

We still don't have our scene changes down yet, either. One of my assignments is to help remove the cart w/ the oven on it, but it's placed down right and I exit up left during that scene, so I can't get over there soon enough. A stool didn't get placed for one scene, the suitcase from the final scene didn't get struck, there were new furniture pieces to contend with in another scene - this has definitely been one of my more stressful tech weeks.

I'm no less nervous about my performance, either - I screwed up my lines again last night, this time in my first scene. Part of me keeps saying "You were doing fine until we got to Tech; you'll be fine again as soon as we have an audience." That's the little voice I need to listen to, not the one that keeps saying "OK, what are ya gonna screw up tonight?" ;)

That quick change of mine is continuing to be a problem. Despite changing to a looser-fitting pair of gloves and drafting "Mrs. Macafee" to help me change coats, I was a little late for my entrance Tuesday and quite late last night. I think tomorrow I'm going to wear a hat instead of a scarf as "Ann". I agree with the costumer that the scarf disguises me better, but the hat goes on in 2 seconds; I just don't have time (3 or 4 lines!) to position and tie the scarf.

Heavy tech week

We've done practically a double tech week for Birdie - rehearsals just about daily last week, though not on Friday. Saturday the director reblocked a coupla numbers to accommodate the performance space, then we ran the show. Sunday was the marathon - 1 p.m. call to set up, then run the show. We finally finished around 9.

Working with this company is unusual for several reasons. First, we perform in the nave of the church, which feels very weird to me. Performing in the nave means that Sunday we spent about 3 1/2 hours removing all the chairs, lecterns, and the altar (!), then setting up the risers that form part of the set and also hold some of the audience seating. That'll stay up until after Saturday night's show, when we have to tear it all down and return the nave to its worship configuration. Sunday we have a 1:30 call for the 4 o'clock matinee so we can turn the nave back into a theater. And repeat the drill the 2nd weekend of the run. Sure explains why there's no matinee the 3rd weekend - that's too much work for a single performance!

The other weird thing is that Thursday is their choir night and the choir rehearses in the nave because that's where the organ is. Which means that we don't get to rehearse on the set the night before we open! =:o Instead, our final rehearsal will be in the parish hall. At least we'll have our musicians for that, instead of having to make do with just a piano. TBD whether it will be a run or just a music/choreo rehearsal.

We never got a Sitzprobe (music-only rehearsal w/ orchestra), either, unless that happens Thursday. We just ran the show Sunday night w/ 3 musicians playing, and last night with 4. We'd been told there'd be 10, but it's probably just as well we don't that many; I don't know how we'd shoehorn them into the space available.

Other things unique to this performing venue: light spill from the stained-glass windows, so we have to rig sthg for the window directly behind the stage so the images projected on the backdrop screen (50s pics, Conrad Birdie, train station, etc.) will show. No green room or backstage dressing rooms, so we have to hang out quietly behind the stage and masking flats and change in improvised areas. The restrooms are reserved for audience members, at least at intermission, which makes me wonder how the cast is supposed to answer nature's call during the show. Because we have no wings or fly space, all the props and set pieces get stashed backstage or behind the masking flats.

Last night we had a 6:30 call to do make-up, hair & costumes, then blocked the curtain call. I was a little surprised to see how many little groups the director has come out - given the size of the cast, and based on my experience, I expected the teens & smaller adult roles to come out in bigger groups to make the bows go more quickly. Except for the teen girls (a group of about 6 or 7, I think), most come out in 2s and 3s. Mae comes out with Hugo Peabody; we're the first principals out. The MacAfees follow us, then Conrad, IIRC. Albert & Rosie get the final bow.

When we finally ran the show last night, we stopped at each scene change to assign responsibility for setting and striking props and set pieces. This obviously added quite a bit to our rehearsal time; I didn't get home until midnight. There are 10 of us in Telephone Hour who are singing and gesturing behind a scrim, but that scrim hadn't appeared by last night. I can't help but think that the scrim won't materialize and the 10 of us will be cut. I wouldn't be sorry to just stand in the back and sing (we were there for added voices and visual interest), but when I think of the rehearsal time spent on it... Ah well, guess it's the theatrical equivalent of ending up on the cutting room floor.

We added musician #4 last night (who was sight-reading), and we still don't have all our stage masking, or lights, the Telephone Hour scrim & back lighting, or the kitchen appliances. (Mae will look pretty silly sticking her head in a non-existent gas oven.) Part of me keeps saying "don't worry, it'll happen", but part of me is also nervous about how ready we'll be for opening night, especially as we don't get to rehearse on the set Thursday night.

We worked in full costumes, hair & make-up last night, so I did get to try my one quick change (from Mae to "Ann O'Nymous"). I was still buttoning my coat after I got on stage, but of course that was only the first time; it should be a little better tonight. The costumer pointed out today that I forgot Mae's supposed to wear gloves in that first scene. Fortunately, "Ann" doesn't have to, or that costume change would be even tighter. I'm expecting the make-up guy to tell me my make-up needs to be less understated, too - he seemed a bit unsure when I presented myself for his approval before we started, saying he thought it might be too pale but he'd have to see how it looked under the lights.

I'll have to get a picture of my Mae hat; when I put it on last night, people would look at me and chuckle or even laugh! And I'm sure that when I combine it with the fur coat, I'm a vision. Of what, I couldn't say. The fur coat produced some interesting reactions from a few of the others in the cast. When asked if it was real, I said "yes". A couple of the cast members are vegetarians and actually recoiled when they learned it was real, after they'd just been petting it.

Forced break

Woke up w/ another migraine today - that's 3 in a week! Yesterday's was soon subdued w/ meds and a can of Dew, but that didn't work today, so I ended up calling in sick again. I was blaming it on the pollen count (allergies can be a migraine trigger), but I can't help wondering how much stress might have contributed, given that I didn't get home from rehearsal last night until midnight. So I slept in and was relieved to find the migraine was completely gone by mid-morning. Didn't go in to work at all, which gave me time to starch & iron a shirt for one of the Birdie teens, load a wooden office chair for the opening scene into the car, and generally just sit and do nothing for more than 5 or 10 minutes at a stretch. I'll have time to eat at a normal pace, take a nice, long shower, and still get to rehearsal with plenty of time to find a parking place. I'm even taking time to do a bit of blogging.

I'm choosing to take this latest migraine as a sneaky gift of some down time. Much needed, as this has been a tough tech week and it's only Tuesday.

For the theater-addicted

I subscribe to Savoynet, a Gilbert & Sullivan listserve and the source of probably 90% of my G&S knowledge. (It can also be a fun fount of wordplay, but that's another matter.) A recent post solicited reactions to http://otslmikado.blogspot.com/, where the director of the Opera Theater of St. Louis' production of The Mikado is writing up his impressions on the production process. I checked it out and found that he includes teaser pictures of the rehearsals & production stages of the show in addition to his impressions on pulling it all together. There are several things I like about it: it's well written and proofread; it lets me peek into how the process works at the professional level; and it's another look into The Mikado, the show that got me started blogging.

Anyone who's done or even seen more than one production of any show knows it's different every time. Change just one element, be it as small as a single cast member or the characterization of a minor role, and you get a different result. Change more than that - the director, the "concept", even the instrumentation, for musicals - and you have an entirely new show. Not being a chemist, I wouldn't consider attempting to analyze why or how that works, but it's what makes it possible to see the "same" show over and over again. "Haven't you seen Show X umpteen times already?" "Yes, but not with this director/lead/concept..."

Rain, rain, come and stay

Rain in the forecast, to start sometime today or tonight, with "risk" (why "risk"? what happened to "chance"?) of thunderstorms tomorrow. I can already feel the front moving in; I woke up w/ a migraine that came on like a freight train. In the 15 minutes between the alarm going off and bringing in the morning paper, it went from "migraine imminent" to "lie down before my eye explodes" - never good! I took my imitrex as soon as I got up, followed it w/ a can of Dew, but quickly realized that my usual procedure of going to work and doing brainless things while waiting for the meds & caffeine to kick in wasn't going to cut it. So instead, I cut my losses - called in sick, then went right back to bed.

TW called (and woke me up) around 7:30 but quickly got off the phone with a promise to call back a few hours later when I told him I was down w/ a migraine. Smart move - he's seen just how pointless it is to try to talk to me when I can't bear to open my eyes.

The migraine isn't helped by the pollen-induced sneezing fits and other miseries, which is why I find myself cheering on the weatherman when he predicts rain. "Rain, rain, come and stay - wash this pollen all away!"

Pollen poisoning

Friday we finally got some wonderful weather - sunny, cloudless skies and temps in the 70s, after not seeing the sun since the previous Saturday and enduring highs only in the 40s. Gorgeous! And the beautiful weather lasted right through the weekend - the joggers, gardeners, walkers and stroller brigade were out in force. The dogwoods, azaleas and other late-spring flowering trees and shrubs have really popped out - looks wonderful.

Unfortunately, the tree pollen was out in force, too. Monday's pollen count was 2000 and yesterday's was even higher - two thousand two hundred! To put this in perspective, the non-allergic start feeling it when the count gets to 150-200, and the allergy sufferers start feeling miserable when it's as low as 50. As a result, I've been walking around with what feels like the granddaddy of all head colds, eyes that are swollen and itchy, a sore throat that extends halfway down my sternum, I've been sneezing my head off, and I even ache all over. This is the time of year I want to move into a nice, sterile bubble until the trees quit spreading their pollen indiscriminately over all & sundry.

I just hope and pray the pollen count backs off a bit by the time we open next Friday. I always lose my voice for a day or two around this time of year; the last thing I need is to have laryngitis on opening night! =:o

Chipping away at the backlog

So this is what back-to-back tech weeks is like...

Saturday I had a day off!, so I caught up on some dishes & laundry and even stole some time to play in the dirt - watered my impatiens and dumped several bags of topsoil in the eroded spots in the driveway and the spot by the basement steps where the clay settled after the sewer reconstruction of a year and a half ago. Saturday night a fellow Birdie cast member and I went to see Thoroughly Modern Millie and absolutely loved it. Good show, well cast and well performed - wonderful!

Sunday started the marathon - from work I went straight to Murder rehearsal. Costumes are not where I'd like, but given the time constraints I was working against, well, I'll have to live with the results. (Poor little theater company - they're getting what they paid for.)

This week might as well be tech week, as we have rehearsals every night except Friday (opening night for Murder; guess where I'll be that night)! Saturday is our last "normal rehearsal"; Sunday is load-in and run-thru w/ tech. Gonna be a long one; call is at 1, and we're scheduled to run until 9. It'll be interesting to see if we actually do a cue-to-cue, or if they'll still be pointing lights and such. Tuesday is when it'll start to get real - that'll be our first rehearsal w/ costumes & orchestra.

Not even tech week and I'm already tired. I may leave work early on Friday and go home to take a nap.

Enough already!

When I called home Sunday, Dad answered and obviously had a very bad cold. Serious head congestion and at one point he had to hold the phone away while he coughed. Long and hard. At which point I told him I'd get off so he didn't have to try to talk. Mom took him to the doctor yesterday (with her immune system still recovering from the chemo, they weren't taking any chances) and called me later to say Dad was in the hospital w/ pneumonia! Apparently they took him off the IV (meds & rehydration) earlier today and, if all goes well, he'll get to go home in the morning.

Sounds like it was never all that serious, but Dad's 79 and not in the best of shape, so when Mom told me he was in the hospital, well, I was a wee bit worried.

The Illness section of my prayer list is getting so long, I may have to subdivide it - parents, breast cancer, other cancer, other illness...

Happy anniversary

... to us! TW sent me an anniversary present, which arrived Friday. However, because it was insured, the carrier left me a pick-up slip instead of the package. Saturday I was at the post office and had just given one of the staffers my ticket when TW called. He was surprised I'd gotten the package so quickly and told me he'd call back in about 10 minutes, once I got home and had opened the box! When I told him he'd better give me more time, as I'd only just given them my slip, he stayed on the line until I actually got the box. I had only just gotten home and pulled out the scissors to start opening when he called back (he doesn't know the meaning of the word "patience" when he's giving presents). Turns out he'd sent me a set of pearl jewelry - necklace, post earrings, and bracelet. Freshwater pearls, very white, and small, so they're subtle. Very pretty, and I really like the bracelet because it has a section, set off by a gold spacer bead on either side, with graduated pearls, so that the centermost is nearly twice as large as the "regular" pearls.

TW also very generously solved my dilemma of an anniversary gift for him by buying himself a set of 4 woodworking DVDs. I didn't have to shop, wrap or mail - all I have to do is pay for them when the credit card bill comes in. :D

Garden update

The daffodils are pretty well spent, the tulips are starting to open, yet I still have crocuses in the driveway! For all that I planted them all at the same time and to the same depth, I got a few new purple ones popping up last week.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that some of the mazus I planted in the driveway last year is coming back. Not very thick, but it's making an effort, and yesterday I noticed that the one closest to the street actually has a few flowers on it!

Yesterday I stole some time to run over to the nearest nursery and get my annual "fix" of impatiens. Three colors this year - white, pink & purple, which I planted in the bed under the mailbox, where they always do so well. Instead of mixing them up, this year I planted the white in the back and along the front steps, the purple along the front of the bed, and the pink in the middle. Very conveniently, it started raining yesterday evening, so I didn't have to water the new residents. (Although I will have to water the one little impatiens which is so sheltered by the house and a corner column that it got almost nothing from the drenching we got.)

Thanks, I needed that!

Ooh, just had 2 wonderful shows in 4 days! My voice teacher & I went to Merry Widow Thursday night. Some quibbles about the costumes & make-up, and some of the blocking wasn't as lively as I could have wished, but the music was absolutely GLORIOUS!!! I love pretty much every note in the show, and hearing it live had me blissed out every time they got to one of the hits from the show. Work had been particularly aggravating that day; knowing I had Merry Widow to look forward to helped me get through the day, and the music most definitely did not disappoint!

Then this afternoon we saw a Condensed Mikado - no chorus, most of the chorus numbers and verses to all the remaining songs cut, Pish-Tush' material given to Go-To, so the show fit into an hour and a half. I was surprised at how very much I liked it. Perhaps because it was in a black box theater and the players were therefore that much closer to the audience, the actors' faces seemed much more mobile. It was certainly one of the most playful Mikados I've ever seen, and I've seen plenty - the actors were obviously having a lot of fun, which made it fun for us in the audience. I loved the characterizations, which might have seemed over the top in a traditional production but which were absolutely perfect in this context.

Tax time

With Birdie & Murder eating my evenings & weekends, I had to take a day off work to do the taxes. With TW deployed, we're eligible for a 6-month filing extension, but that doesn't mean an extension if you owe the IRS any money, so I had to at least rough in the numbers to learn whether we'd have to pay.

Lotsa problems, mostly because for some reason a few key things weren't in the "2006 Taxes" folder. For starters, if TW printed a copy of last year's return before e-filing, I couldn't find it. And the softcopy was lost in the Great Computer Crash of September 06, so in the morning I'll mail off the forms to request a "transcript" of last year's federal return (free, whereas a copy of the actual forms runs $39!) and a copy of the state return. I also couldn't find a couple of our year-end statements. Had all the documentation been where I expected to find it, this would have been pretty easy. As it was, a padded cell was starting to look pretty good...

It didn't help that it took me at least an hour and a half to get the miserable computer ready to start; seemed as if every time I tried to do something, I'd get a pop-up telling me I needed to update one application or another.

I can't help but wonder how much it'll slow things down that TW isn't here to sign the forms. I've got copies of his orders and hold power of attorney, so I can always submit copies to the IRS and the state, but - correct me if I'm wrong - doesn't that sorta seem to defeat the point of e-filing?

Not again!

We got yet another Birdie rehearsal sked yesterday! That's it; I'm gonna hafta tell the Murder director & producer that I just can't do it. When I can't count on off days staying off days and I'm therefore not able to plan thrift shopping, I don't see how I can finish costuming Murder. Not if I want to stay employed or avoid booking a room at the local mental facility. Although, now that I think about it, it'd probably be nice & quiet there, no responsibilities... Nah, the other inmates would probably get on my nerves. ;)

Now there's a stage direction I never expected to get!

Running one of the Act II scenes Wednesday night, the director was trying to get me to play a particular exit ever bigger and told me "Try to steal the show"!!! Talk about a stage direction I never expected to receive! After all the years I've spent in the chorus, where pulling focus is a capital offense, I just had to laugh. I can play big, I just have to unlearn that "never pull focus!" habit.

I must be starting to get it, though. When we ran the scene Thursday where Albert tells Mae he doesn't need her any more, I played Mae in what I thought was a ridiculously melodramatic, over-the-top way and the director didn't bat an eyelash. This is gonna be fun! :D

May have to bury "Murder"

We got yet another Birdie rehearsal sked on Wednesday. This one has me called for rehearsals almost daily - that's right, evenings and weekends - until we open, including all of tech week and opening night for Murder Takes the Stage. I had to e-mail the Murder director & producer to warn them that I might have to pull out, and I've just spent time assessing what costuming I have and what I still need. I was dismayed to find I'm not nearly as far along as I thought or as I'd like to be, 3 weeks before opening. However, I do have several pieces for people to try on; if those work, we'll be much closer to complete costumes.

I hate bailing on a commitment, especially given that they open soon, but I signed on for Birdie first. If I ever try to do concurrent shows again, somebody PLEASE stop me!

Halfway home!

TW hit the halfway point of his 6-month deployment earlier this week. We're counting down to the day he gets on that homeward-bound plane - can't wait!!!

Feeling ever so slightly crazed

Now that it's April, I'm realizing that Murder opens 3 weeks from Friday and I've only clothed half the cast. One of the women just e-mailed me that a skirt we were planning to use for her character doesn't fit after all, and would a linen one be ok? Sure - do you have one that fits and is a late-50s cut & length? Please say you do!

And our poor Birdie director just issued yet another rehearsal schedule update - this must be at least the 6th or 7th version. The church where we rehearse and will perform keeps changing the schedule on us, which means having to redo the sked again. It's a wonder poor Frank isn't completely bald from pulling his hair out in frustration. So now I have to figure out if I can still go grocery shopping & thrift shopping when I'd planned to or will need to change because of the rehearsal changes.

Saturday, which I'd earmarked for baking (and taking a friend to Easter Vigil services), is now on the schedule as a choreography rehearsal day, numbers TBD. If I'm lucky, they won't work the one dance number I'm in (except I don't really dance; I'm one of the 6 standing on blocks ), so I won't have to reschedule my plans. If I do have rehearsal, though, my baking decision is made for me - rum cream pie is faster & easier than either apple or carrot cake, and much less messy.

Work's been nuts - what with spring break, broken pipes, ailing parents or kids, and vacations (the nerve of some people!) all happening much too close together, those of us left to hold the fort are perfecting our one-armed paperhanger imitations. I racked up an extra 6 hours last pay period without even trying, and I'm already well on my way to doing the same again this time. A collateral duty I picked up when someone else left is trying hard to become a full-time job all by itself; if it doesn't slack off soon, I'm gonna hafta ask for some help because I'm spending barely 10% of time on what's supposed to be 80% of my job. And won't that wreak havoc w/ my year-end performance review! =:o

TW called this morning and asked if I'd send him some cold meds. Poor baby, he sounded horribly congested. So after not getting out of work until it was much too late to get anything in the mail today, I stopped and got him his cold remedies. Had to ask the pharmacist for one of 'em (pseudephedrine in it). Poor guy looked pretty harassed about the process and was apologetic when, after I gave him my military dependent's ID, he had to ask for my driver's license because that's what the new regs require. Now to box it up so I can mail it off tomorrow. That'll be my excuse - "I have to leave on time today - gotta get to the post office before it closes." Never mind that it'll be a week before he gets it, by which time the cold will be in decline.

Waiting for the MVA to send the registration stickers for my car. I shoulda had 'em by now, especially since the old ones expired Saturday. Until then, my car sits in the driveway while I take TW's to work. (And one of these days I gotta get those bags of dirt outta the trunk. The way gas prices are going up again, I can't afford to schlep that stuff around for no reason.)

And I still have to do the taxes! Rehearsing one show & costuming a second is devouring my nights & weekends, so I guess I'll have to take a day off work to get the tax job done. At least with all the comp hours I've worked, I won't have to take "regular" leave. :p

But when, oh when will I get a chance to play in the garden? I haven't even shopped for impatiens yet, let alone bought any, and I have all that vinca to be planted (if it hasn't died by now), and dirt to spread, and...

A nice dilemma

Hmm, what to fix, what to fix? I'll be joining friends for Easter dinner and am supposed to bring a dessert to go with the coconut cake someone else is baking. I submitted a lengthy list of "candidates", which the hostess narrowed down to three: apple cake, carrot cake or rum cream pie. There'll only be 7 or 10 of us around the table (one family of 3 may or may not attend depending on the health of fragile parents) so I don't need to make a big dessert.

I have a fleur-de-lis cake mold and a mini-Bundt mold; I might make a dozen minis instead of a single full-size cake. But that would mean washing & re-prepping the pan between batches, not to mention that one recipe makes one full-size cake (12 slices) but only 9 minis. That's fine if there are only 7 of us, but if there are 10, I'd have to abstain. Or I could make 2 cakes - one apple and one carrot - have far more than enough minis to take to Easter dinner, and still have enough to share with our neighbor.

And then there's rum cream pie. This has been a Christmas tradition in our family for as long as I can remember, in no small part because an old family friend (he's known my 50-years-married parents longer than they've known each other!) loves the stuff. As do I. We've also made it for other occasions; it's always popular. Might be a chance to introduce it to a new audience.

I could make rum cream to take to dinner and a cake (or a batch of minis) to share, since the rum cream is a refrigerator pie, not a baked variety. Mix up the cake, slide it in the oven, then make the pie. (I haven't baked since right before TW deployed; I think I'm going thru baking withdrawal.)

Care to weigh in? Feel free to vote. :)

Mom's energy level...

... must be almost back to normal, at long last. When I called home today, Dad said Mom was busy in the kitchen, fixing brunch for the local contingent of the family (3 of my siblings, their spouses, and 7 of the 10 grandchildren). Dad said this is the first time in probably a year that Mom's felt up to doing this - a very good sign indeed! Mom absolutely thrives on having family around her and loves feeding us, so she must really be having a good day. She'll probably crash & burn once everyone leaves (don't worry, no one will let her clean up afterwards), but I'm sure she's delighted that she's back in action again at last.

Color!!!

Spring is getting into full swing here. The buds on the Bradford pears in the neighborhood started opening yesterday, the magnolias are just a day or two short of their peak, the cherry trees are starting to bud, the forsythia is coming out all over town, I had a miniature purple crocus pop its little head up in the driveway today, and the daffodils are coming into their own.

Had a lovely ride to my voice lesson today; in addition to all the flowering trees, seems like a few more medians have been planted w/ daffs. I love this trend, whether at the municipal, county or state level. It certainly lifted my mood today, stopping at one of the longest traffic lights and seeing a bank planted in a sea of yellow. My voice teacher even commented that I looked "sunnier" than last week. I told her it was all the "color coming back into the world". Because the winter gray sets in so gradually, I never fully realize just how much it affects me until the spring flowers start making their riotously colorful appearance.

Oooh, sparkly!

Got my wedding & engagement rings back today. The jeweler cleaned & polished them in addition to the repair, and boy, do those little diamonds sparkle! Maybe it's just because they're clean, but they look bigger to me now. Even better, the ruby looks wonderful when the daylight hits it, now that all the gunk's been cleaned out of the prongs. Even in incandescent lighting, it glows more. (Home jewelry cleaners just can't touch whatever it is the jewelers do.)

Gardening update

Picked up 6 bags of topsoil the other day to fill in holes in the "boxes" in the driveway and a few places in the yard; I'll probably do that tomorrow.

The crocuses I planted in the driveway last fall have come up nicely. Mostly yellow, a few white, but no purple ones; at least, not yet. And of the 4 mazus reptans I planted last year, only 1 seems to have survived. I've noticed a few tiny green leaves making an appearance; maybe this year it'll manage better. However, I went ahead and ordered some "walk-on-me" for a ground cover. With any luck, it'll live up to its advertising and spread quickly so the new dirt doesn't follow the old dirt down the driveway and into the street. Looks like it shouldn't interfere w/ the crocuses, and the few surviving sprigs of vinca and pachysandra TW planted there last fall should be ok there too. Maybe this will be the year that dirt between the concrete strips finally looks halfway decent, instead of the semi-eroded weed patch it's been for so long.

My vinca's looking a little peaked so far this year. Maybe it's just the way the temperatures have been changing so dramatically (lows in the 50s one day last week, followed by highs in the 40s the next day!), but the flowers that have appeared so far are smaller and paler than usual.

Busy week!

Been running around like a crazy thing this week. Work's been busier than usual (some sorta bug is making the rounds in the office at one of our busier times of year), went to a Murder rehearsal for some preliminary costume fittings, and of course had Birdie rehearsals too.

Saturday I hit some thrift & antique stores and came home w/ a purse for me to use as Mae; a fur stole that has the entire critter (heads, feet and all); a perfect pearl-trimmed hat for the "star" in Murder; and a tie, 2 dresses, a top, and a skirt, also for Murder actors. So far I've got one of the men completely taken care of; the sheriff needs a pair of trousers and some official-looking insignia; two of the women are completely taken care of, one has half her costumes, and I still have all the rest to do. There are at least 2 for whom I'm going to have to sew something, but if one of them can find 3 different tops, she'll only need another skirt. I'm starting to feel a tiny bit of pressure, but I know that'll escalate as soon as it gets to be April, since the show opens April 27th. Complicating matters is the fact that I'll only be able to make the Sunday & Tuesday before opening, as I've got 3 Birdie rehearsals during Murder tech week. If in future I'm ever crazy (or amnesiac) enough to think I could do 2 shows that open on successive weekends, please remind me that back-to-back tech weeks are NOT a good idea, especially if you have a day job!

Last night I went to a CD release party for Wooing the Lorelei. Great material - both the music & the lyrics are very intelligently and wittily written; the music is not at all predictable and rewards repeat listenings. The songwriter had written these for a cabaret act, and they remind me a lot of Noel Coward, Cole Porter, or the Gershwins. Very sophisticated "stand around the piano in cocktail-party wear while sipping martinis" sort of music. In a fun packaging gimmick, the CD has been pressed to look like an LP; nice touch.

Spent too much time on e-bay this afternoon searching for 50s hats and cats-eye eyeglass frames. I ended up bidding on some glasses w/ clear frames, a crinoline, and a hatbox full of 13 hats! If I win all 3 bids, I'll be able to provide hats for all the ladies in both Birdie & Murder!

Tired

And when I'm too tired, I get irritable and prone to wallow in self-pity. Doesn't help that I noticed at work this morning that I'd lost one of the diamonds from my wedding band. Not a big one, but what looks at a glance like a schmutz on my ring is actually a hole. Makes me miss TW that much more.

Spent most of the day working on a quarterly bean-counting report. My mood wasn't helped by the fact that I spent a few hours on it Sunday, then learned yesterday that I'd been working on the wrong form. (They'd sent out the wrong one.) I wasn't surprised, though; I'd thought on Sunday that it was a whole lot less work than in the past. Royal pain in the tuckes, with some inadvertently (I hope!) unreasonable statistics requested. Wretched thing is due at noon tomorrow, but is gonna hafta go in with one section incomplete, since I ran out of time to get to it and will be busy with visitors tomorrow.

Another irritation: The company for whose Pirates I auditioned is already soliciting additional tenors for the chorus, while I have yet to hear whether they want me for the chorus. (I didn't get called back, so they're obviously not going to offer me a lead.) I've had a problem w/ this MD once before. I was one of 3 being considered for a role. One of the wannabes learned that night that she wasn't cast because she saw the MD at a concert. The wannabe who did get cast found out the following day that she was the lucky one when someone else in the cast congratulated her on getting the role! The MD called me at work the day after that, commenting that "I forgot we hadn't called everybody". You "forgot"?!?!? (OK, c'mon, take a deep breath; now let it out s-l-o-w-l-y.)

Beautiful day today, and most of the crocuses seem to have survived the cold blast over the weekend, but because I'm tired, these irritations still have me in a pissy mood. At least I don't have to be at rehearsal until about 8 tonight; can catch up on e-mail and my blog and still have time for a reasonably relaxed dinner.

"Duty-free" night

The rain that started falling last night had turned to sleet by late afternoon today, so instead of running errands and getting dinner out, I picked up some (wonderful-smelling!) Chinese food on the way home. I'm taking this execrable weather as a sign that I'm meant to do nothing, not one blessed thing, on my To Do list tonight. Instead, I plan to change into sweats or some such, put Singing in the Rain into the VCR, and curl up on the couch w/ my Chinese and a glass of wine. There'll be plenty of time tomorrow for all those To Do's...

Cow video

Yes, I said "cow video" and a very silly video at that: http://www.3dweb.no/galleri/stuestolbm/bilder/anim1.swf
I think it's the trumpets in the chorus that really had me laughing, but some of the puns were pretty good, too.

Voice lesson in which I sang not at all

Since I probably won't audition for anything else before fall, today's voice lesson was a planning session - long-term vocal projects (picking things to work certain techniques, vocal color, etc.), reviewing the types of things in my repertoire (3 categories - Broadway, G&S, and opera), and picking a few things to prep "for future reference". She told me something interesting: some teachers, especially when they get a young student, will tell them to audition for nothing for at least several months or even as much as a year! I guess that's so the student will have plenty of time to focus on correcting bad habits, learning new ones, developing technique or what-have-you. That's my guess, at any rate, based on the fact that this arose in the context of our observing that we haven't worked long & hard on any one thing in my lessons lately because I've been doing so many auditions this season (13 since August, and 3 in a single week back in January!).

Last audition of the season?

Auditioned for Pirates of Penzance tonight. Didn't do badly, but not as well as I'd like, either. And there was another mezzo who I'm betting also has her eye on Ruth and has a better voice than I do, and I know she's not my only competition for the role. So I don't expect a callback and, given my other theatrical commitments, I may not take chorus. TW was funny when I talked to him earlier today: "When will they start rehearsals? ... So you'd be rehearsing two shows?!? You're gonna kill yourself!"

On the other hand, much as I love Pirates, if I pass on it, that'll give me more time to work on those curtains for the cabin, which I haven't even started yet.

Lotsa knife fights this weekend

On stage, that is. Saw Wait Until Dark last night and a version of Carmen: The Tragedy of Don Jose today. Both had people trying to kill each other. Last night's fights were very realistic; all the moves looked very real, the violence read as authentic, and the falls looked and sounded as if the person falling would be getting up w/ bruises. (The guy who got knifed and fell down a partial flight of stairs probably does have bruises.) Today's weren't so much fights as stylized knifings - "kill him quick and keep the plot moving" sorta thing. But Don Jose did seem to be pretty quick to solve his differences that way; he killed 2 or 3 of Carmen's lovers before he killed her.

Lots of obsession this weekend too. Friday night it was Rene Gallimard's obsession with his Asian "butterfly" (M Butterfly), this afternoon it was Don Jose's jealous obsession w/ Carmen. In both cases, it ended badly.

"Winter visitors"

Been seeing a lot of slate-colored or dark-eyed juncos lately. I don't know where they've been hiding all winter, that I didn't notice them until a few weeks ago, but it's fun to watch 'em hopping around in the snow. And since they always seem to travel in groups, they make quite a striking picture, with their dark coloring against the snow. (Or sleet, a few weeks ago.)

Flying solo

Back in December I "certified" to teach a day-and-a-half specialty class at work. The last step in the process was teaching with the course manager observing from a corner. Yesterday and today was the first time I taught solo. I think it went well; last time I had a few folks who really struggled w/ the material. I made some notes to amend what I covered and how; this time all but one of them sailed through everything. The one non-sailor struggled but is nowhere close to failing; it's simply a matter of determining how much above the cut-off that person's final is. Felt good - knew my stuff, was able to answer the questions, and best of all, they did really well on the final exercise (7 of them definitely scored in the 90s; the 8th may just pull it off too).

I did have to put in some extra time to prep for the class and get the "finals" graded this afternoon and will need to spend a bit more time tying up administrative matters, but success is a good feeling.

Good voice lesson

Last week's lesson, the first in nearly a month, wasn't particularly productive because we'd had another sharp weather change that filled my lungs w/ crud. This week's, however, was much better. Due to a bit of confusion, I showed up at 4:30 when K wasn't expecting me until 6:30. After some discussion, I headed off to a leisurely dinner, then returned for a 6:30 lesson. I don't usually like to sing so soon after I've eaten, preferring to give the digestive juices plenty of time to settle, but the burger, fries and hot tea didn't seem to hurt me. I walked into my lesson without warming up at all, yet in the vocalises my voice didn't crack at all until I got up to a high C (not bad at all for a mezzo!), then proceeded to go down to a G below middle C. Over 2 octaves, cold - I was pleased! We then worked on an audition piece for Sunday (Pirates of Penzance coming up). Listening to the tape in the car on my way home, I actually liked a fair amount of what I'd done, which was very encouraging. Now if only I can do that well come Sunday...

Calendar juggling

Thank heaven my voice teacher is flexible. I had to reschedule next week's voice lesson once because I found out about a mandatory meeting that starts just when I'd be leaving work for my lesson. Then I learned I've got a rehearsal that night, starting less than an hour after the start of the rescheduled lesson time, so I had to go back and ask for a new lesson time. Let's hope this third time works out, or I think my brain might explode!

The next week is pretty crazy - adjudicated a show last night, Birdie rehearsal today, seeing a friend's show tonight and another tomorrow afternoon, rehearsal tomorrow night for the show I'm costuming. Monday night rehearsal, Tuesday voice lesson, Wednesday friend's show, Thursday dinner w/ a friend (not a theater-related calendar item!), adjudicating shows next Friday & Saturday nights, friends' show on Sunday (w/ another theater friend), and an audition that night. Maybe I can reschedule my headshot session during the day on Saturday; heaven knows, I can't squeeze it in any sooner!

April & May will be more of the same: in addition to the show I'm costuming and the one I'm in, I have one to adjudicate, five that various friends are doing, and 2 others I auditioned for and would like to see.

Here it is, barely March, and I've already seen more shows than I often see in an entire year! Now I completely understand why my Theater Mentor color-codes her calendar! However, I'll drop it all like a hot rock once TW comes home in early July, and will be much more restrained when the next season starts in the fall. After all, one he's safely home again, I won't need to keep my mind off his absence.

Crocuses!!!

Not to mention snowdrops, and even a clump of precocious daffodils! I had one lone brave, advance-wave crocus that popped up and bloomed about a month ago, when we were still in the throes of temperatures that never got up to the freezing mark. Then nothing but a few shoots until earlier this week. Our highs started passing the 50-degree mark around Tuesday, then into the 60s, so I'm not all that surprised that my crocuses have started popping up. Usually it's the purple ones that show first, but this year I've got at least half a dozen yellow ones and nothing else, aside from a snowdrop or two, and yesterday I noticed a house in the neighborhood had a clump of daffodils in full yellow glory. We've got a fairly shady lot so our bulbs tend to appear later than elsewhere in the neighborhood. The springlike temps have had everyone in a good mood after last weekend's snow, but the crocuses clinch it for me - they've always been my sign that winter is on its way out and spring is in the wings, just waiting for its cue to make a grand entrance.

Now I want to drive by this one house a few blocks away. It sits on a corner lot and every spring has a yard that's a sea of lavender crocuses. It does my spirits good to see it, even on the rainiest day.

My allergies hate spring (my lungs are already starting to fill with crud), especially once the trees start pollinating their fool heads off, but I absolutely thrive on those first signs of spring's arrival. Now I'm itching to run out and buy truckloads of soil for the vinca I ordered last month and to fill in the driveway so I can plant something there, too. I have no idea when I'm going to manage that, what with my own and other people's shows, but I'm definitely going to carve out some chunks of time to start digging into the garden, both literally & figuratively.

The importance of geography

For anyone who ever thought "geography - who cares? Why do I need to know how to read a map?":

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1827554.stm

One answer, obviously, is "to prevent hugely embarrassing international incidents"!